Kearns and Limerick primed for final hurdle.

(From Irish Independent)

AT some point in every rags to riches story like it there is a nadir, abasement level that doesn't allow you to degenerate any further.

Liam Kearns remembers Limerick football's nadir as Carrick-on-Shannon and a league fixture with Leitrim over three years ago, only his second match in charge of a county that had long since disappeared off football's radar before his arrival.

Their opening league match against Westmeath in Feohanagh had been a mild success, a six-point defeat which had Kearns figuring that this might not be the poisoned chaliceso many had told him it was. Carrick-on-Shannon cast a different light, however.

Buoyed up by the Feohanagh result, one of Kearns' selectors at the time, who also actedas the County Board liason officer, proposed that the squad should travel north on aSaturday and stay overnight. Kearns thought it was progressive thinking, but the trip was a disaster.

Leitrim won by 20 points and the manager detected how the …